I was cruising Eric Alterman’s blog over on MSNBC and ran across this gem (I love how he posts his hate mail):
When was the last time you or anyone you know was arrested by Ashcroft? Thought so.
I guess it’s like anything else. People figure they’ve got a good argument and they just go around repeating it without thinking much about it. I don’t know. I’m just glad counter-arguments for all injustice don’t work this way or we’d have people wandering around saying things like “When was the last time you or anyone you know was unjustly convicted of murder and sentenced to death?”
I guess that you could add to that “When was the last time that you, or anyone you know was gassed to death in a shower?” or “When was the last time that you or anyone you know was hacked to death in an African church?” Best to just bury that head in the sand.
Heh. Or even “When was the last time you or anyone you know was killed by a drunk driver?”
When was the last time you or anyone
you know admitted to being a liar?
The previous example does not properly
illustrate the fallacy in the ridiculous
Ashcroft statement, as the other
comments brilliantly do, even though at
first blush, it seems to. That’s the
beauty and genius of sophistry – it
takes so much real thinking to see it,
and most of us haven’t got the time
for that.